


Violets

by TearoomSaloon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, I swear they like each other, Slightly Masochistic Hux, Slow Build, but so slightly, here it is, mild dominance, the rarepair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 02:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: It is like being lured into a trap, only she wants to be caught by him, by his ambition and indomitable will. He is a scientist by mind, by design, and she is fascinated by the way he controls his power.





	Violets

**Author's Note:**

> For all my regular readers, please take note this is not the pairing I typically write for.
> 
> I have loved this pairing since the movie came out, but I haven't had the balls to write for it until now.
> 
> Hux is described as Domhnall as being science-minded, so I took that and ran with it.

He looks like the man she’d first met, the other ginger, though this one is skinnier, more limber. The uniform he wears obscures the true breadth of his shoulders and she hasn’t speculated how built an officer could possibly be. The majority she has seen over the course of her training have been soft in both body and mind, easily pliable. He, however, is a pillar. A wall of brutality like his father before.

She has made a mental note to never mention the senior Hux after watching the general bristle ferociously at the sound of his father’s name. Of course, then he had been a colonel and younger still, perhaps twenty-five. He has a better control on his emotions now, a firmer grasp on the outer projection of himself. He is a stoic unless he is in fervor, though his frustration and dry wit bleed through the cracks in his marble façade.

If asked, she would say they are vaguely familiar in only a professional setting, though it is not quite the truth. It has taken years, but she understands the inner mechanisms of his thoughts, and he has stopped trying to bend her durasteel will to his whim.

Years before, when she was starting to rise through the First Order’s ranks, she caught him late in the officer’s lounge of their assigned vessel, blueprints spread out on the longest table he could find. He has the mind of an engineer, of a scientist, laid so uselessly to waste in control of a military. True, he has clawed his way to victory, not a single position obtained with a nepotistic pat on the back, but _what a way to squander gold._

He lives in a world of pistons and engine pieces. He views his men like the cogs in a machine, working together to power a larger beast. If she is honest, this is the only way she can see his talents not lain to waste. She’s never told him so, positive he would snort and make a snide comment without looking up to her, his eyes glued to the datapad in his hands.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she had asked one late night in her command’s infancy, when she was still a lower-ranking officer.

He had raised an eyebrow, red hair mussed from restless fingers. “Are you going to take up much space?”

She had looked down herself and back up, aware of her height.

“I mean table space.”

“Oh. No.”

He had kicked a chair out for her before disappearing back into his work, awareness vanishing like fog over a dusky lake. Once every few hours he would ask a question to fill the air, _what’s your number designation, do you ever take your helmet off, do you specialize in a specific weapon?_

She does not have a number, she only takes off her helmet when in the barracks, and she uses a heavy-duty blaster rifle. He had looked up for that answer, mild surprise on his face. Of course her weapon would have a powerful muzzle, look at the bulldog of a girl who wielded it.

They had grown slowly into a companionship, he awed by the Stormtrooper captain without a batch number, she curious of the machinist treating his field army like the ship it was stationed upon.

He likes to tinker in his free time, though he does not have free time. The general is up all hours of the night, dark black bruises from lost sleep sinking down his cheeks in the false sunlight of the bridge. She has had one shift that ran her through the night hours and he was awake for the whole of it, bustling about, his gaze glued down at the information streaming across the glass tablet in his hands. He rarely puts it down, eating breakfast one-handed, head turned to the side. If he hasn't slept in a long number of hours, his caf mug will miss his mouth.

Watching him explode in anger is a special form of entertainment as long as she is not on the receiving end. She has only been the subject of his rage twice, once when disrupting him in the middle of a meeting, the second for the traitor, FN-2187.

“Your soldier has disgraced me,” he had hissed, the color of his cheeks matching his blazing hair. A vessel looked about to burst in his temple.

“The trooper you speak of no longer belongs to my ranks.”

“If it happens again,” he warns, teeth bared, stalking off before finishing his thought.

He will calm down in a matter of days but until then, he will not acknowledge her existence. It is at least mildly annoying to work with a general who considers her a ghost walking.

It is in this fit of anger that he first glimpses her without her helmet. She is seated on a bed in the soldier’s medical bay, a large chunk of her shoulder being stitched back together. She doesn't mind training the newbies, but she can’t say she favors their aim, always ending the day slathered in bacta and in a sour mood.

He freezes and she knows her own expression has gone cold. She cannot fathom what he’s doing this deep in the _Finalizer’s_ bowels, but there he is, orange-gold hair and everything.

“You’re blonde,” is the only sentence he can manage to put together, words dribbling down his chin.

“I am.”

“You’re missing an eye.”

“It’s not missing.” A long scar rolls down from her forehead and almost to her jaw, the eye in its path paler than its blue counterpart, almost translucent.

“Can you still see out of it?”

“These questions are more personal than usual, General. Yes, I can.”

“Did—”

“Old wound. Force magic, if I had to guess.”

“Oh.”

He makes a fussy bow before disappearing down the hall to whatever duty called him here. Though she enjoys watching him squirm, she feels exposed, her face revealed after years of well-kept secrecy. She hopes he won’t compare her scar to Ren’s.

It takes another few weeks for him to be comfortable with her again. They sit in silence in his office and work, a habit that has been kept since the first night she intruded upon his solitude. He welcomes her presence as much as a man like himself can, with general indifference. She doesn’t mind, prefers the surefooted familiarity to the uncomfortable stumbling.

“You don’t have a disagreeable face,” he says softly one evening, his sixth cup of caf slowly cooling on his desk. He doesn’t look up to address her, his attention buried in his work.

“General?”

"You look…pretty, I suppose.” His brow furls, eye darting to her, to seek approval or disagreement. When he is met only by the impassivity of her helmet, he coughs. “Apologies.”

Odd man. He is best when speaking to his machines, not to those he holds as equals. She has contemplated she, too, is a machine, but his behavior says otherwise now. He becomes nervous when about to ask her an off-kilter question, when his words will stray the territory of work-appropriate. Personal alliances are considered foolish, occasionally superficial, but he has a genuine interest.

He approaches her when she is alone in the upper lounge, locking the door behind him. Her head swivels to the sound of his approach, intrigued if not wary. His step is slow, purposeful, the look in his eyes akin to a doe in the meadow separated from its mother.

“If I were to ask,” he starts, fussing with his hair, “would you remove your helmet?”

"If your request were for an urgent cause.”

“And if it weren’t?”

“No.”

“It’s important, but not urgent.”

He is just driving himself in circles now. She sighs. “Do you need me to remove my helmet, General?”

"Yes.”

 _This had better be worth it,_ she thinks to herself as she releases the pneumatic seal. Shaking out her hair, she watches the expression on his face shift from anxious to dumbfound. He bites his lip subconsciously, gaze flickering to her scar.

Phasma cocks an eyebrow. “Hux.”

In a slow, deliberate, absentminded motion, he dips to kiss the tail end of the scar over her jaw. And as she stares, unresponsive, he collects himself and swiftly exits.

It takes ten minutes for her mind to reboot and process what happened. She tears through the halls, her helmet replaced, making quick time to his office where she knows he’s licking his self-sustained wounds. Fury is bubbling in her blood, hot and merciless, driving her anger from her lungs into her fingertips. When the door to his office closes behind her, she tears off the helmet, unable to breathe.

“ _General_ ,” she growls, holding the chrome plating fiercely between her palms.

“Do you need something, Captain?” His nonchalance makes her want to punch him harder.

“What in chaos was that?”

“Sentimentality. I admit I am a tad embarrassed.”

She cannot find words. Does not know what to say, to spit, to howl. He shouldn’t be allowed to disregard the rules like that. “It was inappropriate.”

“Atrociously so. But I’ll let you in on a secret. Pull up a chair, Captain.”

She does so jerkily, her actions automatic. Emotions are stirring deep in her core and she is refusing to pick them out of their stew, to identify anything more than her rage.

He beckons her closer. “You wanted it too, didn’t you?”

“I am not one of your machines to manipulate, General.” She snaps her jaws, teeth flashing in her feral snarl.

He sours, hurt. “You’ve never been a cog, Phasma.”

“I am a Stormtrooper—”

“You are my _Captain_.” He reaches across the desk and strokes the back of his knuckles across her scar. She lets him. Why does she let him? “First and foremost. Always.”

She leans into his touch when he cups her cheek, dazed. She is nothing if not a cog, a plan, a pawn. The more she looks anywhere but his eyes, the more frustrated he becomes, eventually walking around his desk to stand before her. He is above average height, but if she were to rise to her feet, she would diminish any power he held by looming above. She does not stand.

He braces one hand on the back of her chair when he kisses her. It is not chaste, nor is it gentle, and she is not surprised when her hands find a grip in his hair, his cloak. He settles himself atop her lap with a vicious need to be taller, more dominant. She’ll let him have that much for now, unable to see herself having even the smallest lick of power over such a neurotic, obsessive creature.

A long few seconds pass before he stands and pulls her to her feet. In a impulsive, desperate need for control after it had been ripped from under her, she decks him.

“We’re not speaking of this,” he says as he holds ice to his left eye, a violet splotch already beginning to form.

“Of course, General.”

“Did you need to hit me so hard?”

“It was an accident.”

He turns to her slowly, pausing in his retreat to his quarters. “I have a black eye, and it’s an accident?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” she admits in a low voice. Truly, she hadn’t been. Her knee-jerk reaction to surprise should not be to hit the closest object.

“You weren’t thinking.” His deadpan is impressive through a mildly swollen cheek. “Well, think next time. I can lie about rough sex, but getting punched in the face is more difficult to play off.”

Phasma can feel her face heat inside her helmet at the thought. Lewd scenes flash through her mind, the image of him breathless beneath her, violet marks decorating his pale neck like a ring of flower petals—

“Are you coming?”

She glances passed him and into his staterooms. “Are you not upset?”

“Oh, I’m upset. I’m going to look like I lost a brawl in the morning, but that doesn’t negate my question.” Cautiously, she follows. He reaches for one of her hands when the door closes, squeezing her fingers slightly past the point of comfortable. “Next time, don’t hurt me unless I ask you to.”

“Will you ask me to?”

“Yes.” He lowers the ice, the skin around his battered eye red from the cold, lavender from her knuckles. The look in his eyes is both fearsome and excited, making the hair on the back of her neck prickle, the sensation pleasant. “In more discreet places, of course. But I’ll only bite back if you want me to.”

**Author's Note:**

> He took getting punched in the face pretty well.


End file.
